| dbo:abstract
|
- The Michigan–Michigan State football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the University of Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State University Spartans. The teams first played in 1898 and have met 114 times. The game has now been played uninterrupted, every year since 1945. The winner of each year's game receives the Paul Bunyan – Governor of Michigan Trophy, a four-foot wooden statue of a lumberjack that was first presented in 1953 to commemorate Michigan State's beginning football competition as a member of the Big Ten Conference. Michigan leads the series with an overall record of 72–38–5, though the series has seen several ebbs and flows during which one team or the other has experienced periods of dominance. In the earliest years of the rivalry from 1898 to 1933, Michigan was the dominant program with a record of 23–2–3. The Spartans' first victories were in 1913 and 1915 under head coach John Macklin. Prior to 1958, 44 of the 50 games were played on Michigan's home field. The teams began alternating home fields in 1958. In the entire history of the rivalry, the game has never been contested anywhere beside Ann Arbor or East Lansing, and alternates between the two respective campuses. With rare exception, games in odd-numbered years are contested at Michigan State, and even-numbered years at Michigan. The Spartans had four consecutive victories from 1934 to 1937 under head coach Charlie Bachman. With the arrival of Fritz Crisler as Michigan's head coach in 1938, the Wolverines then won 12 consecutive games. During the 1950s and 1960s, under head coaches Biggie Munn and Duffy Daugherty, the Spartans had their most prolonged period of success against the Wolverines, compiling a record of 14–4–2. The pendulum shifted back to the Wolverines under Bo Schembechler and his successors, as Michigan won 30 of 38 contests from 1970 to 2007. After Mike Hart's statement in 2007 referring to the Spartans as the Wolverines' "little brother", the Spartans reasserted themselves under head coach Mark Dantonio, winning seven of eight games from 2008 to 2015. From 2016 to 2019, Michigan won three out of four, but the Spartans won the 2020 and 2021 games under new head coach Mel Tucker. (en)
|
